It happened at the Athénée in 1893. We were rehearsing the “Salome” of Armand Silvestre and Gabriel Pierné. Behind the scenes one day I encountered a man with an enormous muffler, which went several times around his neck, and a tall hat of a style that came down over his ears. I chatted with him in the indifferent French I had at command, and this without knowing who he was. While talking to him I noticed a hole in his shoe. He was aware of my discovery, I suppose, for he said to me: “I had that hole made expressly. I prefer a hole in my shoe to a pain in my foot.” This man was Victorien Sardou. A word more about my Japanese friends. Kawakami has a son who was five years old when I first saw him. He passed his time drawing everything around him. I observed in his simple childish drawings a very peculiar manner he affected in representing people’s eyes. They were always drawn like billiard balls emerging from the face. I asked Kawakami: “Don’t you think that it is an odd way to draw eyes?” “Yes, but it is because the European eye is quite like the eye of a fish,” the father replied. That aroused in me a desire to know more intimately his impressions of our race, and I asked him what Europeans look like from the Japanese point of view. “All Europeans,” he said, “resemble pigs. Some of them look like dirty pigs, some like clean pigs; but they all look like pigs.” I never said anything about this to M. Sardou. XX AN EXPERIENCE It happened in February, 1902. I arrived at Vienna with my Japanese company, headed by Sada Yacco. We had with us an artist to whom I had been delighted to be of service. In Paris my close friend, Madame Nevada, the celebrated American singer, had presented her to me, and the dancer had given me a performance as an example of her skill. She danced with remarkable grace, her body barely covered by the flimsiest of Greek costumes, and she bade fair to become somebody. Since then she has arrived. In her I saw the ancient tragic dances revived. I saw the Egyptian, Greek and Hindoo rhythms recalled. I told the dancer to what height I believed that she could attain, with study and persistent work. A short time after I left for Berlin, where she rejoined me. During our stay there she was ill most of the time and could do hardly any work. Finally, on our return to Vienna, we began our studies seriously, and I decided to organise some evening affairs as a means of bringing her before an audience of people capable of appreciating and understanding her.